


Technology

by deborah_judge



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Happy Ending, Post-Canon, Robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-05
Updated: 2012-10-05
Packaged: 2017-11-15 17:02:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deborah_judge/pseuds/deborah_judge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Colonists wanted to live without technology, but she's the most complex technology they know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Technology

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nicole_anell](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=nicole_anell).



The humans decided to give up technology, but Sonja knew it wasn't possible for her. She wasn't sure what it would even mean. Her body was made of technology, her bones and blood and mind. It didn't make her less of a person. But she wanted to live with humans, that's what she was here for, so when she and two of her brothers were accepted by a small group of fifty humans who thought they could be an asset she downloaded everything she needed from the ship and the others into her mind and went with them empty-handed.

The world they had settled was beautiful, full of light and green. She analyzed the chemistry of each plant and when she knelt she crumbled dirt through the sensors in her hand. It had all the nutrients they would need. The human leader - her name was Marta - picked a spot for them to settle, and Sonja set to the work of building a hut made of mud and branches and leaves. It was a new kind of technology for Sonja, but the systems in her mind could incorporate it, could make sense of the patterns in the way the organic matter fit together, and she built her hut came together from the materials in the earth.

In the summer they gathered and planted and in the winter the rains came. In the spring she learned the technology of harvesting. They needed rotations for chores, and to plant things in different fields, and Sonja kept track of it all in the computer in her mind.

Sam came to her at night when she was returning from harvest. She didn't see him approach, he just wasn't there and then was, and when she ran to embrace him her hands passed right through his chest. "Not bad for an avatar," he said, and smirked.

"You're alive," she said. It felt unbelievable, she had thought that her model and the Twos and the Eights and Ellen and Saul were the only ones left. She couldn't imagine it, and she wasn't sure she wasn't dreaming. 

"I'm still a Hybrid," he said. "Still on the Galactica. I just wanted to see this place." He looked around. "And see you."

"Why me?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Guess I thought you'd get it. What it's like, to be a person and not."

She wanted to hug him. She did get it, she'd felt so alone here with the humans, and yet it was where she had wanted to be.

The next day Marta changed the rotations because people were getting tired, and Sonja found herself in a different field, planting a small starchy tuber. "It'll need to be cooked," she said to her workmate, a man named Timmy. 

"So we'll build a fire," he said.

"How?" she asked.

"I guess we'll rub two sticks together," he said. "Or something."

Sonja knew of a dozen ways to start fire. She could start it herself, for that matter, by using a spark from where her internal circuits join. She didn't think that was what Timmy had in mind.

Sam was back the next night, and the next. They built a raft together and so they could lie in the center of a nearby lake and feel the water move around them. Two nights later she was surprised to feel his fingers brushing against hers.

"Guess my projecting skills are getting better," he said. Sam's body was insubstantial and his kisses were light, but they were real. 

When spring became summer Sam was gone. "Ships need to fly," he said. "It's what I'm built for." It struck Sonja as a strange thing to say, she didn't know what she was built for but it certainly wasn't putting tubers in dirt. Still, if he took pleasure in flying he should have it. It was only a month later that he returned. This time her hands didn't go through him at all. They lingered on his body, touching and exploring his muscles until he grabbed her and pulled her on top of him. 

"I was on Caprica," he told her when it was time to take a breath.

"New Caprica?" she asked.

"Caprica," he said. "I brought things back. Some antibiotics. Some history books. I can get more."

The next day Sonja told Martha about all of it. "Do you want it?" she asked. "Should I ask Sam to bring it down?"

Marta thought. "We'll take the books," she said. "But we've decided to live without technology."

Sonja wasn't going to argue, and she didn't know what to say. Technology was in her and of her, and they had chosen to let her live with them.

Sam landed quietly in a distant field, far enough from any human that they could imagine all they saw was a shooting star. Sonja took the books and the medicines. Then she kissed Sam where he lay prone in his Hybrid bath. He felt real to her, concrete, familiar. She wanted to just stay on the ship with him, but she had promised to join herself to the human community and that was what she was going to do.

For the next two nights Sonja didn't leave her home. Gene splicing would be tricky work, but she could do it. She had all the information that Ellen and Sam and Tyrol and Tory and Saul had ever had when they had created her, she had downloaded it before she set out. The antibiotics went into a tuber. A fruit got vitamins. Antivirals are more tricky, but she could get one into a green vegetable in such a way that they would be released when it was cooked. Then she worked in the fields tirelessly and planted them all.

She told Sam about it the next night. She didn't expect him to approve and wasn't disappointed. "You should have asked first," he said.

"You didn't ask when you made me," she said. "They would have died without it."

"It wasn't your decision," he said. "They decided not to live with technology."

"They do live with technology," Sonja said. "They live with me."

Sam didn't say anything, but he didn't push her away when she sat close to him. He was solid on their Earth as his body was in the ship that circled above them. 

In the fall rains came and watered the ground. In the spring they harvested the plants, ground the grain, cooked the tubers and ate. As the seasons passed they watched life and technology grow, up from the ground to the sky.


End file.
